Yesterday was National Plant a Flower Day.
From the website:
National Plant Flower Day is on March 12 every year. We don’t know about you, but flowers make us an infinitely nicer and happier bunch! We love how they’re just meant to bloom — no questions asked. The flower’s approach to life is worth emulating! Not only do they bring us joy, but there’s a flower for virtually every mood. Whether expressing grief, love, gratitude, or appreciation, flowers say it best when words fail us. So let’s spread the love and plant more flowers this National Plant a Flower Day.
Late yesterday, after stopping at the garden center to pick up these Sunflower packets - I planted the variety of sunflowers in our deep cobalt blue planters. Let's see if in 100 days, these gorgeous Solar Eclipse, Velvet Queen and Mammoth plants will bring renewed hope for this perilous moment in history.
"Flowers say it best when words fail us."
GRATITUDE
Seeing Vincent's 'Sunflower' paintings at the Vincent Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam was a thrill.
Van Gogh’s paintings of Sunflowers are among his most famous. He did them in Arles, in the south of France, in 1888 and 1889. Vincent painted a total of five large canvases with sunflowers in a vase, with three shades of yellow ‘and nothing else’.
His fellow painters thought that sunflowers were perhaps somewhat coarse and unrefined. But this is exactly what Vincent liked, and he also enjoyed painting flowers that had gone to seed. He gave sunflowers the lead role in several paintings.
The sunflower paintings had a special significance for Van Gogh: they communicated ‘gratitude’, he wrote. He hung the first two in the room of his friend, the painter Paul Gauguin, who came to live with him for a while in the Yellow House. Gauguin was impressed by the sunflowers, which he thought were ‘completely Vincent’. Van Gogh had already painted a new version during his friend’s stay and Gauguin later asked for one as a gift, which Vincent was reluctant to give him. He later produced two loose copies, however, one of which is now in the Van Gogh Museum.
Vincent knew that his sunflower paintings were special. As did other people. After he died, friends brought sunflowers with them to his funeral. Sunflowers became synonymous with Vincent, just as he had hoped.
I will spend some time in the next couple of days looking for more fabric to complement this central panel from the Covent Garden collection. The imagined quilt will find a special place in our guest room.
From eQuilter.com:
There is something very gracious and soothing about this lovely floral still life by Canadian designer Deb Edwards. It is from the Covent Garden collection, but it also reminds us of the 17th Century Dutch Floral Paintings that still stop us in our tracks in the great art museums of the world.
These luscious flower arrangements capture the blossoms in their fullest state of sumptuous blowsy ripeness, symbolizing prosperity and abundance.
And, just as soon as we can fence in an area, I will plant a Peace Rose in our garden.
From Jackson & Perkins:
Peace is one of the most well-known and beloved hybrid tea roses, and it was named Peace to commemorate the end of World War II. Bred by M. Meilland in France, this rose's development was interrupted by the war. It was sent to the United State for completion.
The rose won AARS honors in 1946, the same day that the peace treaty was signed with Japan.
This soft-colored rose has large five to six-inch blooms in yellow edged with pink. As the rose matures, the colors deepen and spread. Heavy, straight stems support these magnificent flowers - ideal for cut flower displays. This rose can reach six feet in height and three feet in width with many large blooms and dark, glossy foliage.
"The flower that follows the sun does so even in cloudy days." ~Robert Leighton
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